I lie upon my ruined side in the Green Chapel
And listen to the buzz of the flies
Jostling to feast on my dying flesh.
I share my bed with a pool of my blood-laced vomit.
I cringe under the cynic’s thorned lash.
Beneath splintered bone and cloven flesh,
That flensing serpent strikes.
Each bite is torpor.
The torpor speaks in my ear
And shows me
A starving man at
The edge of a dead oasis.
He digs for water,
With parched hands full of silver.
And yet
I want to believe that
Camelot will rise from ruins
and Llamrei will bear her once and future rider once again.
But lash stroke still splits skin.
And each wound wends towards the same revelation.
The wounds speak in my ear
And show me two
Bold-blooded boys, bound in bitter-black battle, both
Swallowing their teeth
And looking away
From the long awaited axehead arcing
Towards their necks.
I yearn
For the King back from his rest at Avalon.
I want to stand steel shod, sage sash serving
To remind me what I strive to be.
I want to be a man and maxim.
For the first time again.
Or again for the thousandth.
Any again but never.
A whip cracks.
A dolorous chill, blood deep.
The cold speaks in my ear
And shows me
Countless heroes fallen
As far as Lancelot cowering in his keep.
And worse,
One who will never rise at all,
Defeated by the wintry muzzle of the dragon
At the roof of his mouth.
But beneath my freezing bones
I can see a half-spent furnace.
I reach in to fuel it even though
The coals sear my fingers.
The guttering light taunts me
With flame-licked visions of a golden age
Lost as surely as my life’s blood.
I climb in.
As I burn, I see
Arthur, proud atop Llamrei.
Just out of reach above my head.
She rears and I try
to cry a charred fealty
but Arthur raises a forestalling hand
And catches the barbed whip.
King and knout crumble to ash.
I am alone.
I roll onto my back.
The chapel is quiet now.
Neither Arthur
Nor I
Will return.
But I believe something
Someone
Better.
Will take our places.
I still believe that.
God, I still believe.
Even now.